The Whisper Man

The shock had subsided a little now, but only in the way I imagined there might be a few beats of silence after an earthquake hit before the screaming started. I could still remember how it had felt at the police station, my father standing there, looking back at me, seeing me. My mind had immediately leaped back to the long-ago time when I’d last seen him, and I’d felt small and powerless. I had been transported. The fear and anxiety. The desire to diminish myself so that he might not notice me. But then the anger had come. He had no fucking right to talk to my son. And then the resentment. The fact that he got to be involved in my life—in a position of power over me, even—seemed so deeply unfair that I almost couldn’t bear it.

“Are you all right, Daddy?”

“I’m fine, mate.”

I was staring at the car in front of me. At the man in the driver’s seat.

His name is DI Pete Willis, I reminded myself, and he means nothing to you.

Nothing at all.

Not if I didn’t let him.

“Right,” I said. “Let’s get this over with.”

He met us at the cordon, showed his identification to the officers there, and then led us into the house without saying anything. The resentment flowered again. I needed his permission to enter my own fucking home. It felt humiliating to follow him inside like a boy who had to do what he was told. And it was made worse by the fact that he seemed so indifferent to it all.

He had a clipboard and pen.

“I need to know what’s yours, and what was here when you moved in that you haven’t touched.”

“Everything in the house is mine,” I said. “Mrs. Shearing cleared all the older stuff out to the garage.”

“We’ll check with her, don’t worry.”

“I’m not worried.”

We went from room to room, gathering some basic things together. Toiletries. Clothes for Jake and me. A few toys from his room. It burned me so hard that I had to ask my father each time, but he just nodded and noted them down, and in the end I stopped asking. If he cared, he didn’t mention it. He barely looked at me at all, in fact. I wondered what he might be thinking or feeling. But then I fought that down, because it didn’t matter.

We finished in my office downstairs.

“I need my laptop—” I started to say, but Jake interrupted me.

“Who did Daddy find in the garage? Was it Neil Spencer?”

My father looked awkward.

“No. Those remains were much older.”

“Who are they of?”

“Well … between you and me, I think they might be from another little boy. One who disappeared a long time ago.”

“How long ago?”

“Twenty years.”

“Wow.” Jake paused to take in such an expanse of time.

“Yes. And I hope they are, because I’ve been searching for him ever since.”

Jake looked amazed by that, like it was some kind of accomplishment, and I didn’t like that. I didn’t want him interested in this man at all, never mind impressed by him.

“I’d have given up by now.”

My father smiled sadly.

“It’s always been important to me. Everybody should get to go home, don’t you think?”

“Can I take this, DI Willis?” I started unplugging my laptop, wanting to bring the conversation to an end. “I need it for work.”

“Yes.” He turned away from both of us. “Of course you can.”

* * *

The “safe house” was just an apartment above a newsdealer’s at one end of Town Street. It didn’t look like much from the street, and it looked like even less when Willis took us inside.

A staircase led up from the front door to a landing with four doors leading off it. There was a sitting room, bathroom, kitchen, and a room with two single beds, all of it minimally furnished. The only signs that it was used by the police, rather than simply rented out dirt cheap, were the security camera positioned subtly on the wall outside, the panic buttons within, and the proliferation of bolts on the inside of the front door.

“I’m sorry, the two of you’ll have to share.”

Willis walked into the bedroom carrying sheets and blankets that he’d gathered from an airing cupboard. I was unpacking our clothes and piling them on top of the old wooden dresser, having wiped away a sheen of dust first. The apartment clearly hadn’t been cleaned in a long time and the air was itchy with it.

“It’s fine,” I said.

“I know it’s small. We use it for witnesses sometimes, but it’s mostly women and children.” He seemed about to say something, but then shook his head. “They usually want to be in the same room.”

“Domestic violence, I guess.”

My father didn’t answer, but the atmosphere between us heated up a notch, and I knew the hit had landed. What was between us remained unspoken but was growing louder, in the way that silence sometimes can.

“It’s fine,” I said again. “How long will we be here?”

“Shouldn’t be more than a day or two. Maybe not even that. It’s potentially a big case, though. We need to make sure we don’t miss anything.”

“You think the man you’ve arrested killed Neil Spencer?”

“Possibly. Like I said, I think the remains we’ve found in your house are from a similar crime. There was always speculation that Frank Carter—the killer back then—had an accomplice of some kind. Norman Collins was never officially a suspect, but he was too interested in the case. I never thought he was directly involved, but…”

“But?”

“Maybe I got that wrong.”

“Yeah, I guess maybe you did.”

My father said nothing. The knowledge that I might have hurt him again brought a kind of thrill, but it was a small, disappointing one. He seemed so beaten down and uncomfortable. In his own way, perhaps he felt as powerless right now as I did.

“Okay.”

We moved back through to the sitting room, where Jake was kneeling down and drawing. There was a couch and a chair, a small table on wheels, and an old television balanced on a wooden chest of drawers with a mess of old cables behind it. The whole place felt cold and bleak. I tried not to think about what was happening in our house—our real home—right now. Whatever problems it had thrown up, it felt like paradise compared to this.

But you’ll deal with it. And this will be over soon.

And Pete Willis would be out of my life again.

“I’ll leave you to it,” he said. “Good to meet you, Jake.”

“Good to meet you too, Pete,” Jake said, not looking up from his picture. “Thank you for this delightful apartment.”

He hesitated. “You’re welcome.”

Out on the landing, I closed the door to the sitting room. There was a window here, but it was early evening now and the light coming in was dim. Willis seemed reluctant to leave, and so we stood in the gloom for a moment, his face full of shadow.

“You have everything you need?” he said finally.

“I think so.”

“Jake seems like a good kid.”

“Yes,” I said. “He is.”

“He’s creative. Just like you.”